This invention relates to clustering, for example, of seasonalities to better forecast demand for items of commerce.
Clustering means grouping objects, each of which is defined by values of attributes, so that similar objects belong to the same cluster and dissimilar objects belong to different clusters. Clustering has applications in many fields, including medicine, astronomy, marketing, and finance.
Clustering is done on the assumption that attribute values representing each object to be clustered are known deterministically with no errors. Yet, often, the values representing an object to be clustered are not available. Sometimes statistical methods are used to get estimated or average values for a given object.